UNH Students Knock on Woodward

Seacoast Online reports that a UNH group
calling itself "Students for Academic Integrity" is circulating
a petition to "remove" our local 9/11 conspiracy theorist, psychology
professor William Woodward. Little Green Footballs
also notes this with a pointer to a story at WMUR, New
Hampshire's big TV station.

I haven't seen the petition, but if it really does call
for Professor Woodward's firing, it's bound to be an ineffective waste
of time.
The University's defense against that
is pretty easy: we don't fire professors in response to petitions,
sorry, but thanks for sharing your views, go away.

Look, folks: we can deal with nutty professors. UNH people with even
short memories will remember Ted Loder,
who was devoted to UFOs and the coverups keeping the
truth about them from the masses. But Ted (I'm pretty sure) never did that
stuff in the classroom. I would wager that any decent sized University
has its share of … um … unconventional thinkers on the
faculty.

So the spotlight on Woodward
is simply misplaced; instead,
it should focus ("like a laser beam")
on the badly broken system that allows academically worthless
topics to be "taught" by unqualified instructors.
It would be a lot more interesting if the students
demanded some straightforward
answers from UNH higher-ups as to (a) the guidelines they
follow for permitting gonzo conspiracy theories into the
classroom; (b) why these theories are being presented
by (specifically) a psychology professor in a psychology
classroom.

Teachers are entitled to freedom in the classroom in discussing their
subject, but they should be careful not to introduce into their teaching
controversial matter which has no relation to their subject.

It's a sad state of affairs where the University won't deal with
this issue other than hiding behind bland generalities. And it's frustrating
when Woodward's opponents can't figure out how to mount an
effective challenge that could nudge the University into
doing something that would really regain some of its squandered
academic integrity.

URLs du Jour

Reihan Salam is one of the fortunate few who have managed to
see Mike Judge's movie Idiocracy, and he writes about
it in Slate.

The Club for Growth encourages
a Senate vote against the Amtrak Reauthorization bill. You might want to
click the link, evaluate the arguments, and e-mail your Senators.

Robert Downey Jr. as Tony Stark, aka Iron
Man? Yes, I absolutely could see that.

Mamas, don't let your babies grow up to be cowboys;
don't give them Wayne for a middle
name, either. (UPDATE: I also dropped a note
about this to Dave Barry, who graciously blogged it
with an acknowledgment. It's extremely gratifying to have one's name
misspelled by Dave's very own fingers.)

URLs du Jour

And as the bible teaches us, to minister to the needs of God's creation
is an act of worship, to ignore those needs is to dishonor the God who
made us. Let us vote no on this budget as an act of worship and for
America's children.

Aha! Injecting religion into politics!
So when will Andew Sullivan start including Nancy Pelosi in his continuing
diatribe against the Vast Christianist Menace?

Are you a far leftist? [And reading this blog? How masochistic do you
think your readers are?-ed. Never mind.]
You might be interested in Arnold Kling's latest
where
he describes his idelogical trajectory from "Far Left to libertarian".

I think that quite a few libertarians have travelled that route, and yet
I cannot think of anyone who has gone the other direction. This leads me
to suspect that:

Far Leftists and libertarianism have much in common.

Libertarians know something that Far Leftists do not.

So check it out, see if it resonates.

Ken Jennings calls
Kevin Clash "the most successful and iconic
African-American performer in TV history, right up there with Cosby, and
yet no one even knows his name." I didn't know his name
so I clicked
the link … and said, "Well, I'll be darned."

Pun Salad is Irked@UNH.edu

UNH's student newspaper, The New Hampshire, routinely
prints "news stories" which are barely-veiled efforts at
promoting some cause or issue. Yesterday's (9/26/2006) issue had
a couple of articles in that vein; by themselves, they are pretty
much business as usual. Juxtaposed, however, I thought they demonstrated
something kind of striking.

The
first article considers the "trials" of UNH's
resident 9/11 conspiracy theorist, Professor William Woodward.

For the past month, UNH psychology professor Bill Woodward has been
thrust into the national spotlight for sharing his controversial view
that the U.S. government played a role in the September 11 attacks.

While
"fair" on the surface, quoting both sides,
the article facilely presents the issue
as one of "academic freedom" and the right of Woodward to present
"controversial views." He's just "stirring the pot."

Totally missing: any hard questions.

Are any professorial "controversial
views" OK in the college classroom? Holocaust Revisionism? Homosexuality
as sinful? Faked Moon landings? Intelligent Design?

Apart from that, why in the world would anyone find it appropriate
for 9/11 conspiracy theories to be
presented in a psychology class, or to think that they
can be competently
put forth by a psychology professor? Are physics professors going
to start devoting class time to the great Vince Foster
murder coverup?

(Professor Woodward's students,
at least the ones quoted in the article, have no problem with this sort
of thing.
This isn't surprising; it's much easier to listen to a prof's wacky
opinions than, y'know, actually learn something about
psychology.)

I don't want to see Professor Woodward fired, but the University would
be perfectly within its rights to insist that he stick to his own discipline
in the classroom.
(Say, if he taught conspiracy theories (a) in the context of
Richard Hoststadter's "The Paranoid Style in American
Politics" and (b) offered himself as a prime example.)

But all that's old news, and most of UNH is doggedly closing its eyes
and wishing real hard for the issue to go away.

Bringing us to the second article, this one about
a recent showing of An Inconvenient Truth, Al Gore's frightfest
on global warming.

This past weekend, MUSO packed MUB Theater II with a wide-eyed audience,
some with mouths agape, concerned for our earth's future. "An
Inconvenient Truth," the environmental film narrated by Al Gore, which
explains the dire consequences of global warming, was followed by a
discussion conducted by three UNH professors after Thursday's show.

The rest of the article is about as balanced as the above excerpt,
which is to say, not at all. It's a lovefest for Al up here; the
only indication of contrary views are made simply to accuse the holders
thereof
of dishonesty, and to warn impressionable young minds away:

During Thursday night's showing, Cameron Wake, professor of climate
changes, validated Gore's facts explaining that, "the number of real
scientists who don't believe this have dwindled down to zero." He also
added that the ones opposed to global warming awareness are "mouthpieces
for big oil companies. You shouldn't listen to them anyway."

Anonymous character assassination, in other words;
in case anyone attending happens
to run into the views of (for example) this guy, he's been
preemptively smeared and discredited. No need to pay any attention!

Lest anyone miss the correct
political implications, a couple other profs were
eager to drive those home:

UNH professor Stacy VanDe[v]eer explained to the audience that only with
federal regulations would a significant amount of CO2 be reduced.
Therefore, it is important to ask candidates what they are planning to
do to help the environment. "It's important to tell them, not just each
other," said VanDe[v]eer. Carmela Amato-W[ie]rda, UNH materials science
professor, reminded the packed theater of approximately 170 people to
"be aware of the facts before you vote" and to spread the word to
everyone possible.

I.e., one-sided political advocacy
at a university-sponsored function,
echoed uncritically by the newspaper.
Again, this is business as usual for The New
Hampshire (including not spelling
the professors' names correctly).

But the two articles taken together are a pretty good indication
of the state of intellectual ferment here at UNH. Kooks on the
left are protected, and huzzahed for being "controversial" and
"stirring the pot." Any viewpoints from the right, responsible or
kooky … well, you're
just not going to see that sort of controversy or pot-stirring
here, thank you very much. Those sort of people are simply
"mouthpieces" anyway.

I suppose I wouldn't mind this so much if not for the irritating mixture
of cluelessness and self-righteousness displayed in the double standard.

URLs du Jour

2006-09-26

The NYT editorial writers have a deep and abiding faith
in regulation.

Yesterday, they opined
that "Congress still has done nothing to protect Americans from a terrorist
attack on chemical plants." But it turns out that the only
method of "doing something" acceptable to the NYT is to
subject the chemical industry to new onerous regulations; invoking "security"
is just a cynical cover. Angela
Logomasini at CEI's Open Market
blog shows that the NYT is largely
following the Greenpeace line on this issue.

This followed Sunday's
editorial looking with alarm at the meltdown of the Amaranth
hedge fund, bemoaned "largely unregulated" hedge funds generally,
and concluded—you'll never guess—"regulators need to act
now."

Michael Giberson injects some reality
into this hysteria at the Knowledge Problem blog.
Even the $6 billion dropped by Amaranth was about one-half of one
percent of the total assets held in hedge funds. And if there's
one financial area where people go in with eyes wide open to risk,
it's hedge funds.

And today,
the editorializers are
positively spittle-flecked over current legisative proposal HR5092,
which would marginally cut down the regulatory power of the Bureau of
Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms & Explosives with regards to gun dealers.

House sycophants of the National Rifle Association are aiming this week
to hobble the federal government's power to revoke the licenses of
rogue gun dealers who arm the underworld.

URLs du Jour

On one hand, they've purcased the rights to "VeggieTales", a previously
video-only cartoon show, where explicitly religious themes were routinely
incorporated by its chlorophyll-enhanced cast. But the network
has decided that
all that religious stuff needs to be cut out of the broadcast version.

But on the other hand, they've got a Madonna concert coming up
in which the aging pop star sings on a cross. (As the always-helpful
NYT puts it, "in imitation of the Crucifixion of Jesus." Gee, ya
think?) The president of NBC Entertainment has been quoted
as saying he has "no problem" with that. Controversy is ongoing.

Bottom line:
It's easier to get religious stuff on NBC if you prefix it with
"sac-".

But I also enjoyed Madonna's quote from the article, in reference
to her stunt:

… it is my plea to the audience to encourage mankind to help one another
and see the world as a unified whole. I believe in my heart that if
Jesus were alive today, he would be doing the same thing.

Yup, just can't keep that guy off the cross.

But when
will Andew Sullivan
start including Madonna in his continuing diatribe
against the Vast Christianist Menace?

One of the Democratic soundbite memes for the upcomimg election
seems to be "Medicare for All!". For example, the D candidate
for the local congressional seat, Carol Shea-Porter,
plugs it at her
website:

There are several plans being talked about right now, and I
certainly would support any bill that would alleviate the
suffering, but the plan I favor is Medicare for
all.

And Paul Krugman can always be counted upon to do his bit for
the cause:

If we had a universal system — Medicare for everyone —
…
we'd almost certainly spend less on health care than we do now.

The Google gives (as I type) 62,400 hits for "Medicare for
All" and kicks in another 4,910 for "Medicare for
Everyone". As a marketing tactic, it's pretty good, if a bit
cynical. Medicare is popular and a known quantity, not like that
scary "single payer" thing.

One thing about Medicare for all as that you would need taxes to pay for
it. In fact, our existing Medicare system needs more taxes than we now
collect in order to pay for it, and the future gap between promised
spending and tax revenues is projected to be in the trillions of
dollars. Medicare is the fiscal Titanic, and Krugman says that it is
time to add passengers.

Glug!

Heads up, Granite State fans! I'm probably the last to know that
the latest entry in the Die Hard movie franchise is titled Live
Free or Die Hard. Excellent! I'm there.

Munich

Sometimes I think I should automatically preface all these little movie notes
with "Well, I just got around to seeing X."

Well, I just got around to seeing Munich. As you may have heard,
it's the story of a small group of agents set out to
kill those directly and indirectly responsible for the murder
of Israel's Olympic athletes in 1972. Not content with being
a simple thriller, there's piles of dark moral ambiguity and angst,
as the good guys find out that actually going out and killing
people is not similar at all to your typical Schwarzeneggerian
movie plot. But overall, even if you find all the handwringing
a little tedious, it's still a very competent flick, because, well,
it's Steven Spielberg, after all.

The movie hits the viewer
over the head with very big and unsubtle
references to the "replacements" for the terrorists the
good guys are killing. This very sophisticated worldview regards terrorists
kind of like an infinite box of Kleenex: as one is used up, another one
inevitably pops up to take its place, indistinguishable from
the original. Waah! It's all so futile!

Spielberg has a little
"preface" on the DVD, which (frankly) comes
off as very defensive against charges that the movie was too much
on the anti-revenge/moral equivalence side,
and too fact-challenged. He makes much of
the fact that the book on which the movie was based has "never been
refuted." That's not very convincing. Wikipedia
has an entry (spoiler-filled) that summarizes
the controversy.

Magic: Dave Barry Turns Philosopher into Idiot

In the tradition-encrusted Coughlin Hall of Marquette University,
on the door of room 132F, graduate student
Stuart Ditsler had posted the following quote:

As Americans we must always remember that we all have a common enemy, an
enemy that is dangerous, powerful, and relentless. I refer, of course,
to the federal government.

That sentiment was a bit too hot for the department chair,
James B. South, who marched over from his office (room 132)
and ripped it down.

The author of the quote that shocked the philosopher into censorious
action: that dangerous radical, Dave Barry.

In explanation, Chairman South sent an e-mail missive to the
inhabitants of room 132F:

I had several complaints today about a quotation that was on the door of
CH 132F. I've taken the quotation down. While I am a strong supporter of
academic freedom, I'm afraid that hallways and office doors are not
'free-speech zones.' If material is patently offensive and has no
obvious academic import or university sanction, I have little choice but
to take note.

The story, from which the above quotes are taken, is from a "Viewpoint"
column
in the Marquette Tribune,
written by John McAdams, a political science professor at Marquette.
Professor McAdams also has a blog, bless him, and more can be read on
the
story here
and here.
Other relevant points alleged by Professor McAdams (and, as near as I
can tell, undisputed by anyone):

Political cartoons (anti-Bush, anti-"values voter") had been
posted on office doors without Chairman South ripping them down.

The "office doors are not free-speech zones" was
a policy invented for this occasion by Chairman South. Nobody
had heard of it before, and nobody's found an official version.

Chairman South has declined to answer questions on the matter.

Chaiman South's personal web page is here. You can find
out a whole bunch of neat stuff about him; his top five favorite
Terry Pratchett
novels, for example. And apparently a major fan of Buffy the Vampire
Slayer. What he leaves out: he's a buffoon,
prone to wielding power in petty and arbitrary fashion when encountering
humorously overstated political opinions.

Well, to be more accurate,
physicist Greg Landsberg says
the chance of planetary annihilation "is totally miniscule."
Uh, Greg, you mean there is a miniscule chance?
(Via GeekPress.)

The Economistimagines
what flight attendant announcements
would sound like on a truthful airline.

Your life-jacket can be found under your seat, but please do not remove
it now. In fact, do not bother to look for it at all. In the event of a
landing on water, an unprecedented miracle will have occurred, because
in the history of aviation the number of wide-bodied aircraft that have
made successful landings on water is zero. This aircraft is equipped
with inflatable slides that detach to form life rafts, not that it makes
any difference. Please remove high-heeled shoes before using the slides.
We might as well add that space helmets and anti-gravity belts should
also be removed, since even to mention the use of the slides as rafts is
to enter the realm of science fiction.

Good for a chuckle. Unless perhaps you're flying in the near future.

Best blog article title du jour goes to Donald Luskin, in his posting
about Angelina
Jolie taking on the role of Dagney Taggart in the upcoming movie
version of Atlas
Shrugged: We
the Lipping. Heh! At Pun Salad, that's objectively funny!

URLs du Jour

2006-09-21

David Boaz was appalled by the views
of Islamic scholar Seyyed Hossein Nasr as
heard on NPR's "Diane Rehm Show." So much so that he did some
research to make sure Nasr wasn't some kind of fringe extremist
wacko:

[Nasr is] a distinguished professor at a leading American university. He holds
a Ph.D. in the history of science and philosophy from Harvard and is the
author of more than 20 books, from publishers including Oxford
University Press. His university held a conference honoring him, titled
Beacon of
Knowledge. The website of the Seyyed Hossein Nasr Foundation
declares him "one of the most important and foremost scholars of
Islamic, religious and comparative studies in the world today." So
it seems fair to say that Nasr is not an oddity; he's a recognized
Islamic scholar.

Nevertheless, Nasr also firmly believes that the Pope's statements
about Islam from a few days back are appropriately viewed
as "acts of violence" which are appropriately answered by (actual)
violence and coercion. After Rehm described attacks on
"churches, embassies
and elderly nuns":

Asked for his reaction, Nasr said that such violence was "not
unprovoked—it is provoked." "Because words are
violence?" asked Rehm. "Of course," replied Nasr, "of
course."

Great. There's a recipe for peace and
tolerance!

I wonder how much of Nasr's illiberal
worldview springs from his Muslim background, and how much comes from the
modern American academic environment? Tough to say, since both
are hotbeds of suppression of "offensive" speech.

Continuing in roughly the same topic, you might
remember how, back in September of 2001,
Press Secretary Ari Fleischer
was raked over the coals for allegedly suppressing dissent and
free speech. A typical response came, for example, from
Paul Krugman (as quoted here):

After 9/11, the administration's secretiveness knew no
limits—Americans, Ari Fleischer ominously warned, "need to watch
what they say, watch what they do." Patriotic citizens were supposed to
accept the administration's version of events, not ask awkward
questions.

Or Frank Rich:

Fear itself—the fear that "paralyzes needed efforts to convert
retreat into advance," as FDR had it—was already being wielded as a
weapon against Americans by their own government.

Other examples are easily obtained via the Google.
Now, in fact, such allegations were tendentious
and lazy misreadings of what Fleischer actually said.
For a good knock-down, see Christopher Hitchens' recent
article in Slate (from which the Rich quote comes).

Now I said all that to say this: Ex-president
Bill Clinton appeared on Larry King Live last night,
and said—guess what?—about the Pope's statement.

I think it was unfortunate …
And we -- every time one of us, particularly someone as august as the
pope says something like that, we make the task of the moderates in the
Muslim world more difficult.

May I summarize? Bill Clinton thinks that we should "watch what we say."
Anyone want to hold their breath waiting for Krugman, Rich, and the rest
of that crowd to get as outraged with
Clinton as they did with Fleischer? Me neither.

But that's enough about double standards
and craven attempts at free expression suppression.
For now anyway.
What I'm really interested in is: can Ken Jennings promote the
neologism
celebrinerd into everyday use?

And continuing in the game show theme, Wikipedia has an
impressive amount of information on the Monty Hall
Problem. The entry gives support to the intriguing theory that
Monty Hall is a celebrinerd!
(Via Achenblog.)

And, finally, continuing in no theme whatsoever:
the Human Resources Department at Los Alamos National Laboratory
is woefully
overstaffed. A LANL employee comments
at Dave's blog.

URLs du Jour

2006-09-19

With respect to the continuing uproar about whether the Pope should
apologize for his recent comments about Islam, there's an
interesting contrast between an article at Language Log from Eric
Bakovic
entitled "Apologize
Already" and a WaPo op-ed column from Ann Applebaum
entitled "Enough Apologies".

To be fair, Bakovic is mainly ranting that the headlines he sees in his
RSS reader often fail to match the details given in the actual articles.
He seems content to merely assert that the Pope should give a "direct
apology"; no need for any actual argument.

Applebaum, on the other hand, is pretty convincing for the other side:

… if stray comments by Western leaders -- not to mention Western
films, books, cartoons, traditions and values -- are going to inspire
regular violence, I don't feel that it's asking too much for the West to
quit saying sorry and unite, occasionally, in its own defense. The
fanatics attacking the pope already limit the right to free speech among
their own followers. I don't see why we should allow them to limit our
right to free speech, too.

On the third hand, if you'd like to fantasize, and don't mind
some really bad language, you can check out what Treacher
suggests for His Holiness:

In a televised statement this morning, Pope Benedict XVI lashed out at
critics of his earlier comments on Muslims, referring to said critics as
a "pack of crybaby snake-charmers" and recommending they perform various
humanly impossible feats of flexibility and colonic accommodation.

Another clash of opinion involves the junior half of New Hampshire's
senatorial couple, John Sununu. Andrew Sullivan huzzahs
Senator S. for coming out joining with Republican
"dissidents" on the Geneva Convention issue.

One word about Sununu: he really is one of the last Goldwater
conservatives in the Senate. I'm not surprised by his vote on Geneva,
but I'm heartened nonetheless. He's an under-reported Republican
defender of individual liberty - a rarer and rarer species these days in
the authoritarian Christianism of the GOP.

Leave it to Andrew to drag his "Christianism" hobbyhorse into it.
Meanwhile GraniteGrok is less than impressed:

Great- he now joins the usual Republican trouble-makers that can always
be counted upon to thwart the president at his ever[y] turn in his attempts
to defend America against a new kind of enemy- McCain, Graham, Susan
Collins, et al. Why does he do this? Don't we have enough Democrats
representing the side of softness in the new world war? Sununu did the
same thing during the Patriot Renewal- he held out to the end in order
to dilute a necessary terror prevention tool asked for by the president.
What, does he not trust President Bush?

My impression is that, agree with him or not,
Senator Sununu has principled reasons for
not handing Dubya this particular blank check.

California Girl

I had never read a T. Jefferson Parker book before. This one won
the 2005 Edgar Award for Best (mystery) Novel; that was the main
reason I picked it up. And it's (of course) quite good.

If a bit tiring and long. Most of the book is set in late 1968
in California's Orange County. All three surviving Becker brothers,
a cop, a reporter, and a pastor, are involved in the murder of
Janelle Vonn, a girl from the wrong side of the tracks with whom
they'd been involved since childhood.

There are cameos from Richard Nixon, Timothy Leary, and Charles Manson.
The Southern California of the late sixties is painted with
a broad brush: drugs, Birchers, drive-in churches, the sexual
revolution, everything gets trotted out. T. Jefferson is a pretty good
writer and keeps everything going for about 400 pages, but the
ending is a little flat.

Finding the Words

MOGADISHU, Somalia — Gunmen killed an Italian nun and her bodyguard
Sunday at the entrance of the hospital where she worked, officials said
— an attack some feared could be linked to Muslim anger toward Pope
Benedict XVI.

The nun, who has not been identified, was shot in the back four times by
two gunmen armed with pistols, Dr. Mohamed Yusef told The Associated
Press.

Even if I don't do
outrage that well, it's easy enough to find the right words:

Also especially appropriate are the words of
Kathy
Shaidle, reacting to a Muslim newspaper editorializing about
the Muslim faith "purposely maliciously demonised by mischievous
elements in the Christian West."

The Matador

Good performances from Pierce Brosnan, Greg Kinnear, and Hope Davis
save this movie from total dreckdom, but, really, what's with the
movies' fascination with hit men? Especially when, as here, they spend
most of their time yakking? Especially when, as here, the yakking has
an astronomically high "wit"/humor ratio. I hate that.

You, dear reader, might like this better than I; certainly the
professional critics did. But (probably unlike most professional
critics) fell asleep for numerous stretches, and I don't seem to
have missed much besides more I'm-the-clever-screenwriter dialog.

URLs du Jour

2006-09-15

Constitution Day
is coming up on Monday, September 18 this year. Kip Esquire
notes
the not particularly subtle irony of the Federal law requiring that

Every school and college that receives federal money must teach about
the Constitution on Sept. 17, the day the document was adopted in 1787.
[Or, when the 17th is on a weekend, somewhere around then.]

This is one of those things that you can feed to a Star Trek
computer to make it catch on fire. Contradiction! Contradiction!
Like Kip, Pun Salad loves the Constitution, but, also like Kip, does not love
such Federalism-trashing laws. Here is
what UNH did for Constitution Day last
year. As near as I can tell, UNH is not doing anything this year,
in apparent defiance of the law. This is either a brave act of civil
disobedence or (much more likely) someone just forgot.

The Chronicle of Higher Education provides a Constitution
pop quiz; perhaps it's not too late for UNH to print up a few
thousand copies and airdrop them over Durham.

Speaking of Star Trek, the digitally-remastered
versions of the original series
will start running at a TV channel near you this weekend. First up is
"Balance of Terror", which Yahoo TV tells me I have the choice of
watching at … Sunday morning at 3:05am … or …
Monday morning at 2:05am. Hm, how big a geek am I?

Janice Brown has dug out a
gem, written by a pie-eyed visionary in 1875. Probably would be
considered a geek today.

A hundred years [h]ence! Who that is born to-day will live to see it--a
daily balloon to London, an afternoon trip to Florida? Will the docks
now echoing to the hiss of steam be filled by strange, unearthly shapes,
with wings and fans and g[au]dy bags of gas? Will freight trains, drawn
by noiseless power, pass swiftly beneath the sea, and parcels dart like
lightning. Stranger things than these have happened in a hundred years,
and some may live to see still greater wonders. And yet we cannot
change the face of nature.

Like some kind of cosmic law was being followed,
just when I was feeling more disgusted with Democrats
than with Republicans …

Senate
Majority Leader Bill Frist is trying [to] use a bill
authorizing U.S. military operations, including in Iraq and Afghanistan,
to prohibit people from using credit cards to settle Internet gambling
debts.

Time has more
on Mike Judge's movie Idiocracy, which Fox
is assiduously trying to get people to ignore. ("Heh, he said
'ass.'")

The problem is, Idiocracy is so aesthetically displeasing—its vision of
the future so purposely, gaudily, corporately ugly—that even showing a
second of it made people refuse to see it. Judge's unslick look might
work for hand-drawn cartoons of hicks or a movie that takes place in
poorly lit cubicles, but it's not so great for a sci-fi action comedy.
It just doesn't look or feel like Talladega Nights or
Dodgeball. Even
though Fox probably made a million dollars' worth of trailers and ads,
they empirically knew from testing that every dollar they spent on ad
time for Idiocracy would be wasted.

Mmmmkay, I'm gonna need to defer to that. Mainly because I have no
choice. I have, however, found that the Idiocracy DVD
is queueable over at Blockbuster Online. Even though they have the
release date as 12/31/2007, I've put it right up at number one. Maybe
they'll slip up and mail it to me early.

URLs du Jour

Constrained Katie responds to
the racial pigeonholers at Georgetown U. If only more would follow her
eloquent example.

You can have a War on Drugs. And you can have a War on Terror.
But if you try to do both at the
same time, you shouldn't be surprised when serious
policy contradictions result.
Jacob Sullum explains.

New Hampshire's official state motto is "Live Free or Die".
Pun Salad does not have an official blog motto, but if it did,
"Don't Die Doing Something Stupid" would be one of the top
candidates. The Straight Dope has a good example.

To the MIT pranksters: nice
job. To your Caltech rivals: dudes,
get off your butts.

Many of the laughs in the movie Talladega Nights were
caused by one Sacha Baron Cohen, playing gay racecar driver
Jean Girrard. ("My husband Gregory and I want what any couple wants. To
retire to Stockholm and develop a currency for dogs and cats to use.")

URLs du Jour

Patriotism, I now believe, isn't some sentimental, old conceit. It's
self-preservation. I believe patriotism is central to a nation's
survival. Ben Franklin said it: If we don't all hang together, we all
hang separately. Just like you have to fight to protect your friends and
family, and you count on them to watch your own back.

Living now here but for fortune
Placed by fate's mysterious schemes
Who'd believe that we're the ones asked
To try to rekindle the patriot's dreams

I'm not sure what Arlo would think about a guy like me liking it,
though. Nevertheless. If you'd like to get your mitts around a
great performance of the song, Amazon will oblige you.

But it's not all high-minded music appreciation here at Pun Salad today.
Do you like motivational posters? Do you hate them? In either case,
haven't you often wished
someone would parody them using images from
Star
Trek or 24? Me too.

URLs du Jour

No deep thoughts or five-year-old memories
from Pun Salad today. You're welcome. Other people are
doing that far better than I. (Including, of course, the usual
suspect for that sort of thing.)

However, let it be noted that at 01:49:50PM
on September 11, 2001, Glenn Reynolds
posted
his
analysis which … well, I'm still seeing the same points
made today, from people who are pretending they're saying something
insightful and new.

Last month, James Fallows, writing in the Atlantic Monthly
was confident enough to say we could "declare victory" in the
war on terrorism.

… I talked with some sixty experts about the current state of the
conflict that bin Laden thinks of as the "world jihad"—and that
the U.S. government has called both the "global war on terror"
and the "long war." …

… the overall prospect looks better than many Americans believe,
and better than nearly all political rhetoric asserts. The essence of
the change is this: because of al-Qaeda's own mistakes, and because
of the things the United States and its allies have done right,
al-Qaeda's ability to inflict direct damage in America or on
Americans has been sharply reduced. Its successor groups in Europe, the
Middle East, and elsewhere will continue to pose dangers. But its hopes
for fundamentally harming the United States now rest less on what it
can do itself than on what it can trick, tempt, or goad us into doing.
Its destiny is no longer in its own hands.

So, great, right? Not so fast! Sunday's LA Times has an article
from Doyle McManus.

Five years after Sept. 11, is the United States winning the war against
Al Qaeda? President Bush says yes, but most experts—including many
inside the U.S. government—say no.

Both McManus and Fallows quote "experts", and their experts lead them to
dramatically opposite conclusions. What are poor non-expert schmoes
like (certainly) me and (maybe) you to conclude? Are they interviewing
different experts? Or are they just picking and choosing "expert"
opinion that happens to coincide with the desired theme of their
respective articles? Fortunately, it's not as if the future of
Western civilization depends on the answer, or anything… oh,
nuts.

Where would you expect to find more insight and wisdom?

In the obnoxiously loud cell-phone conversation of
a drunken girl; or

the words and activities of the press corps assigned to cover
Mohammed Khatami's address at the Kennedy School of Government?

Shawn Macomber has an
answer that will shock and amaze you! Or maybe not.

Michelle (ma belle) points out
the September 11th commemorative activities of the King County
(Washington) Library System, which involve (among other things)
the musical stylings
of Tickle Tune Typhoon supporting
"friendship, peace, cooperation and caring for all living things."

Or, if you're not into libraries, man, and you were in Seattle this morn:

A healing drumming circle will take place from 10 to 11 a.m. at Golden
Gardens Park. People are urged to bring a drum or rattle, and a chair or
blanket to sit on.

Michelle deems this "beyond parody," which seems spot on.

And, for the record: "Tickle Tune Typhoon" is a lousy name for
a rock band.

United 93

A powerful movie, despite the fact that you go into it knowing
pretty much
exactly how it's going to end and nearly everything else that
happens. The actors range from obscure to semi-obscure, although
I was able to spot Gregg Henry (the oily Val Resnick in Mel Gibson's
Payback). (And, although I didn't notice her, little Denny
Dillon,
a Saturday Night Live cast member
a quarter-century ago, also appears
as a passenger.)
The lack of recognizability drives home the point
that the heroism on 93 wasn't Willis- or Schwarzenegger-style,
but just ordinary folks doing what the entire might of the US government
could not: saving (probably) the US Capitol building and (almost
certainly) hundreds of
lives on the ground.

The general lack of slick special effects also
helps generate a you're-really-there atmosphere.
The confusion on the
ground is painful to watch; so is the complacency in the air, as
a warning against cockpit intrusions is received, but inadequately
appreciated.

One moving scene near the end shows both terrorists and passengers
saying prayers. In less-skilled hands, this could have been a cheap
and stupid anti-religious trope suggesting that only happenstance
had made one side the bad guys. Instead (for me, anyhow)
it just hammered home
the differences between murderers and victims.

And, yes, I watched this instead of the ABC docudrama The Path to
9/11; according to Dean Barnett (here
and here)
this was the correct choice.

URLs du Jour

Gosh, UNH professors seem to be making news lately.
Raven is not
impressed with the latest one.

But Raven, bless her, also points out one of the
funniest online videos
I've seen recently. (Apparently there's still one person
in France with a sense
of humor. Who knew?)

And Will Wilkinson continues to make more sense than a bushel of
economists on the issue of inequality.

I think part of the problem is that nominal inequality is confused with
material inequality.differences in material living
conditions. But while nominal inequality is increasing, material
inequality continues to decrease. As market competition
pushes prices down, goods at the bottom of the price range more
and more closely approximate goods at the top of the price
range. (Which is why efficiency and equality are complements.) Food
is probably the most striking example of material
equalization. If you compare the diets of the top and bottom quintiles
100 years ago with the diets of the top and bottom quintiles now, you.ll
see that we have become immensely more equal, not less. My favorite pair
of jeans, which I bought at Wal-Mart for $16, is a close
substitute for jeans that cost 5 times more.

But that's only one good point among many; read the whole thing. Really.

There's no reason why someone as brilliant as Mike Judge should be at
the mercy of a bunch of marketing tools, or taking seven more years
between movies. But there's also no reason he should have allowed
himself to get trapped in this situation all over again.even down to
working with the same studio. He should be mad as hell. He should be
knocking down their cubicles. After all, isn't this what he taught us to
do?

Rumor Has It…

This movie rubbed me the wrong way; even the usually pleasing sight of
Jennifer Aniston couldn't save it. Review-type spoiler: the fictional
characters in this movie think fictional characters in another
movie—specifically, The Graduate—are based on them.
Even more specifically, Shirley McLaine thinks she's Ann Bancroft,
Kevin Costner thinks he's Dustin Hoffman, and nobody thinks she's
Katherine Ross, because
(it turns out) she died. Ms. Aniston plays her confused daughter
who's trying to resolve a personal crisis by straightening
out her family history.

There's a lot of dialog that thinks it's funnier than it is.
Performances are pretty flat, except for Richard Jenkins, playing
Jennifer's dad; he actually seems to care about giving a nuanced
three-dimensional performance.

And Kevin Costner's character gave a speech that
referred fawningly to Che Guevara. This knocks
the asshat score up quite a bit.

Otherwise, the word that kept going through my mind while watching
this was: plastic. Ironic!

URLs du Jour

2006-09-07

There's a pretty good article
at Inside Higher Ed about 9/11 conspiracy theorists
by Scott McLemee (including UNH's
own). Among other things, McLemee describes his previous
investigation of James Fetzer, who, before he was a 9/11 conspiracy nut,
was a JFK assassination conspiracy nut.

For the university leftist, trained and conditioned to see America as
the root of evil in the world and isolated from the larger national
community in their campus enclaves, 9/11 represented a catastrophic
blow. And not merely because of the obvious human toll, but because it
stood as a horrific and public rebuke to their ideas regarding the
virtue of the oppressed and led to a (in their view) terrible turn in
domestic politics. It is a short mental trip from hating reality to
denying its existence.

Pun Salad is unaccountably omitted, but I think it would look something
like:

Pun Salad: Knock-down analysis of New York Times
story demonstrates conclusively that everyone would be better off
if all levels of government were 90% smaller. Also, Steve Martin would start
making great movies again, and Thomas Sowell would be invited to give
the UNH commencement address.

Over at "Ain't it Cool News", Quint demands
that Fox Studios do something smart with the movie Idiocracy.
It's directed and written by Mike Judge, who also directed and wrote
Office Space. Despite that pedigree,
Fox is apparently reluctant to release the movie in
anything more than a handful of theatres.
(Via Galley Slaves, where
Jonathan V. Last plaintively
asks "But shouldn't having made the funniest movie of
the decade count for something?" You'd think so; but that's show biz, I
guess.)

URLs du Jour

2006-09-06

At the Technology Liberation Front, Adam Thierer makes
a convincing case for Al Gore being full of crap
in his recent statements on media ownership.

… Mr. Gore wants us to believe that democracy is dying and
that the blame for it falls on "controlled, centralized" media. I guess
such apocalyptic rhetoric helps grab attention for your cause but, in
reality, such comments are completely off that off-the-mark and bear no
relationship with reality whatsoever.

Pun Salad figures you can not go far wrong by mindlessly
imitating Instapundit and
Joe Malchow, who
both
quote the following paragraph from an editorial
from the Examiner:

Something almost without precedent in America will happen Thursday.
That's the day when McCain-Feingold — aka the Bipartisan
Campaign Reform Act of 2002 — will officially silence broadcast
advertising that contains criticism of members of Congress seeking
re-election in November. Before 2006, American election campaigns
traditionally began in earnest after Labor Day. Unless McCain-Feingold
is repealed, Labor Day will henceforth mark the point in the campaign
when congressional incumbents can sit back and cruise, free of those
pesky negative TV and radio spots. It is the most effective incumbent
protection act possible, short of abolishing the elections themselves.

This is the
primary (heh) reason I will never, ever, vote for John McCain for anything.
(Or Russ Feingold either, but let's face it, that was not gonna happen
in any case.)

It seems Americans now need permission to speak out on political issues
and petition the government. I'd suggest a constitutional amendment
protecting those rights, but I thought we already had one.

"Indeed."

Patrick Hynes checks
out the race for the Democratic nomination in New Hampshire
Congressional District One, which is Pun Salad's very own district.
He detects potential moonbattery in candidate Carol
Shea-Porter, who is running against the more establishment candidate
Jim Craig. The primary
is next Tuesday.
(Also running: Gary Dodds
and Dave Jarvis. Dave's
website is probably the least, um, conventional.)

I have no special insight to add, save the observation that
Ms. Shea-Porter's national security page
contains the allegedly sage advice:

America should heed the wise words of Teddy Roosevelt, who said, "Walk
softly and carry a big stick."

This sounds more like what granola-eating tree-huggers advise in
traversing wilderness areas than a guide to foreign policy.
But it turns out also to be a long-standing misquote
of TR, committed in the past by John Kerry, Bill Clinton, and Gerald
Ford; it should be "Speak softly&hellip;"

Professors beware the hot new trend: students putting your
lectures
on YouTube. Shockingly, the linked-to videos do not
demonstrate a uniform excellence in pedagogy. Instead, ridicule
seems to be a dominant theme!

The Huffington Post Hates Physics. And Economics. Oh, and America.

When you are filling up this Labor Day Weekend, if the temperature is
more than 60 degrees, you are getting ripped off by about three cents
per gallon in one of America's most longest-standing, outrageous
ripoffs. That's roughly $2.3 billion per year.

Oh dear. "Most longest-standing." What's the problem?

Well, it's that—as you may remember from some course
you took—matter expands when it gets warmer. As you may
also remember, "matter" includes, specifically,
gasoline. According to this NIST
document, gasoline expands
by a factor of 0.00069 for each increased degree Fahrenheit.
When (say) you pump a given volume of
75-degree fuel, you're getting about 1% fewer
gasoline molecules than you would at 60 degrees. (Conversely, when you
pump 45-degree fuel, you're getting about 1% more.)

It takes a guy like Jamie, however, to look at this physics and detect
a Big Oil Conspiracy.
"US fuel pumps do not adjust for temperature,
unlike their Canadian counterparts," he intones ominously. (Why does he
specify 60 degrees as the point at which the
outrageous ripoff begins? Because the American Petroleum
Institute set that long ago
as a standard temperature for measuring the
density of petroleum products. It's an arbitrary temperature, picked for
convenience, but Jamie
thinks it's been handed down by the fossil-fuel gods, or something.)

What Jamie glosses over:
this is a matter of regulation. Gas stations price by actual delivered
volume because
they are required by your local state government to measure fuel that
way,
with pumps regularly inspected for accuracy to
make sure they're measuring that, and nothing else.
State and federal taxes are also levied against actual
delivered volume. (Aha! The government benefits from the "ripoff"
too!)

So? That could easily change. For example, since Jamie thinks that
varying-density gasolines should not have the same price, a
workaround would be to charge by weight instead. End of "ripoff."

But that's hardly
the only way to do it. We could charge by
the Joule: how much energy would be released by the gasoline you're
pumping?
Or—here's one Al Gore could get behind—we could
force stations to
charge per carbon atom, since a lot of those will wind up in the air
floating around as CO2.

But the key point is, despite Jamie's outrage, none of this really
matters.
Obviously there would be some major administrative and
infrastructure costs in switching over to a new pricing scheme for
gasoline, but after that, consumers would be paying …about the
same as they would have anyway. Because gasoline prices are set by
supply and demand, not by tweaks to the pricing scheme.
If Jamie's desired "adjustment" happened, we wouldn't
suddenly and magically save the $2.3 billion he trumpets; how could that
even begin to be true?

Jamie's unstated
assumption
is that there's some number Out There, which is
the True Price for gasoline. And—obviously!—if you're paying
more than the True Price, you're being ripped off! That's economic
illiteracy, but the Huffington Post doesn't care.

URL's du Jour

Like UNH,
Ann Althouse's University of Wisconsin is dealing
with its own 9/11
moonbat. Professor Althouse, long a longly voice of sanity
in Madison, muses on the conspiracy
mentality:

Is anyone surprised by fact
that people with advanced degrees believe conspiracy theories? Although
plenty of sensible people get advanced degrees, the pursuit of an
advanced degree is something that appeals to the kind of person who
wants to load a lot of material into his brain and do things with it. Someone like that
is more likely to get into conspiracy thinking -- things are connected! -- than the
ordinary person who wants to get through with school and get out in the
world and do things there. The
sizzle and ferment of the inside of the head isn't what most people
want. And they're suspicious of academic types with good reason. There are a lot of screwy people in
academia.

No foolin'.

And this is just wrong
in so many ways. So wrong,
In fact, I'm not sure how long it can last in its
present form, so click quick. (Via Dave Barry.)
[Update: darn, they fixed it. Somewhat replicated here.]

UNH Embraces Diversity in Everything. Except …

As usual, the new school year brings a raft of slick marketing detritus
into the mailboxes of University of New Hampshire
employees. Which is how I laid my hands on
the announcement of the "Saul O
Sidore Memorial Lecture Series 2006-2007."
The theme of this year's lectures is:

Violence Against Women:
Complicating the Legacy of Andrea Dworkin

For those who don't get UNH junkmail, the lecture series
also has a web
page, where you can read about the lecturers and
take in the following gem:

Lectures will be followed by facilitated dialogues run by and for men,
women, and all people.

Yes, after specifiying "men" and "women," it's necessary here
to append "and all people." We don't want to exclude anyone
recognizably human
at the University of New Hampshire. Not on the basis of your
self-defined gender identity, anyway.

Anyway: this year's lectures revolve around the late Andrea Dworkin.
Professor Marla Brettschneider states
the rationale:

The life, ideas, legendary
status and vilification of this extremely
controversial thinker eerily resonates with the
situation on the UNH campus in the past year.
Dworkin's life work commands interdisciplinary
attention. The uncanny coincidence of
her death at the height of a chaotic, runaway
discourse, threats and assaults on women and
those deemed "feminists" at UNH presents a
unique opportunity to wed interdisciplinary
scholarly examination to a serious practical
need on our campus.

It's eerie! Uncanny! But in any case,
we've been bad, so we deserve it.
(Please take
Professor Brettschneider's allegation of "threats and assaults" as incredibly overblown.)

People with longish memories might remember Dworkin coupled
with law prof
Catharine MacKinnon in an anti-pornography
campaign back in
the 1980s. As a user of the World Wide Web, you probably have
a pretty good idea of how that worked out.

In addition to that,
Dworkin was a hedgehog, in an Isaiah Berlin sense:
she knew One Big Thing. And that One Big Thing was… well,
perhaps a few sample quotes
will help you figure it out:

A commitment to sexual equality with males is a commitment to becoming
the rich instead of the poor, the rapist instead of the raped, the
murderer instead of the murdered.

Men have defined the parameters of every subject. All feminist
arguments, however radical in intent or consequence, are with or against
assertions or premises implicit in the male system, which is made
credible or authentic by the power of men to name.

Sexism is the foundation on which all tyranny is built. Every social
form of hierarchy and abuse is modeled on male-over-female domination.

If you find this kind of rhetoric insufferably tendentious,
worthlessly overbroad, and essentially incoherent: well, you're right. But you're also missing the point.
You simply can't argue against such assertions; the people that make
them aren't interested in debating them. They're interested
solely in marking out their territory, signalling fellow believers.
About all you can do is shake your head and walk away.

Or you can mark your own territory; this can be fun, and
nobody does it better than Camille Paglia:

MacKinnon and Dworkin are victim-mongers, ambulance chasers,
atrocity addicts. MacKinnon begins every argument from big,
flawed premises such as "male supremacy" or "misogyny," while
Dworkin spouts glib Auschwitz metaphors at the drop of a bra.
Here's one of their typical maxims: "The pornographers rank with
Nazis and Klansmen in promoting hatred and violence." Anyone
who could write such a sentence knows nothing about pornography,
or Nazism. Pornography does not cause rape or violence, which
predate pornography by thousands of years. Rape and violence occur
not because of patriarchal conditioning, but because of the opposite,
a breakdown of social controls. MacKinnon and Dworkin, like most
feminists, lack a general knowledge of criminology or psychology
and hence have no perspective on or insight into the bloody, lurid
human record, with its disasters and triumphs.

And it's not just Camille. Cathy Young dug
out more quotes
in a Boston Globe op-ed after Dworkin died:

To put it plainly: Dworkin was a preacher of hate. Her books are full of
such declarations as, "Under patriarchy, every woman's son is her
betrayer and also the inevitable rapist or exploiter of another woman."
("Patriarchy," of course, covers contemporary Western societies.)
"Male sexuality, drunk on its intrinsic contempt for all life, but
especially for women's lives, can run wild." "Hatred of women is a
source of sexual pleasure for men in its own right."

[Cathy Young also bemoaned the
"Dworkin
Whitewash" at Reason's Hit&Run blog, using language that
probably wouldn't make it into the Globe.]

Needless to say, neither Camille Paglia nor
Cathy Young will be giving any of the Sidore
Lectures this year. That would "complicate" the legacy of Andrea
Dworkin a bit too much.

No male lecturers, either. Although (see above) it's promised males
will be allowed to run "facilitated dialogues."
Other than that, however, we'll be getting a "diverse"
array of lefty feminists from academia, who seem to have been picked
to make sure the all the racial, ethnic, and sexual orientation bases
were covered.

While our local 9/11 conspiracy theorist
is getting all the current limelight, this kind of stultifying
intellectual conformity is business as usual in the modern university.
That's the real scandal.

Inside Man

Note to would-be bank robbers: if knocking over a bank were this easy,
everyone would be doing it. Don't be carrying out the plan seen here,
because it would be real embarrassing to discover movie plot holes that
way.

Spike Lee directs Denzel Washington, Jodie Foster, Christopher Plummer,
and Clive Owen in
this cat-n-mouse crime caper. I will see just about any movie that has Denzel
Washington playing a cop in it. Here, he's being investigated
for a missing $140K, and we're not quite sure how much he knows about
it.

(Hey, here's an idea: Bruce Willis
and Denzel Washington in a movie about two ethically-challened
burned-out cops who seek redemption against long odds. That script
would just about write itself, wouldn't it.)

Mr. Lee can be a bit heavy-handed on matters racial, but he shows
he can do it with a lighter touch too, and not without some humor.

16 Blocks

Bruce Willis has become the go-to guy to cast
if you're making a movie about a burned-out loser
cop looking for redemption against long odds. Well, good
for him; I like Bruce Willis.

And this movie's pretty decent too, as boozing-cop
Bruce is tasked with
getting Mos Def from the police station to a courthouse
a short distance away (guess how far?) against a short
time deadline and a seemingly infinite supply of bad guys.

The director is
Richard Donner, who's made a lot of big-budget blockbusters
(e.g.: Lethal Weapon [1234], Superman (I|II),
Conspiracy Theory). 16 Blocks is small in comparison, but
moves right along. You know how this is going to play out eventually, but
it's still fun watching them work out the details.

There's an alternate ending on the DVD, but they chose the
right one for the movie.

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